I used to think that ‘between’ can only be used in connection with two things or people. Either I’m wrong or the following is bad English:
Greg, a socially awkward teenager, spends most of his time with Earl. He is forced by his mother to befriend Rachel, who suffers from leukaemia, leading to an undying friendship between the three.
Where do you stand on the ‘between the three’ question?
Hi Andrea, many thanks for posting that blog entry. I like the graphic very much since it clearly shows the differences between the contexts in which among and between can be used. Looking at the table I would say our case at hand falls into the category of ‘naming distant individual items’. @Anglophile, looking at the blog post Andrea shared I think ‘among’ doesn’t work here because it’s usually used when the items are not specifically named. In our case we have three friends with their names – Greg, Earl and Rachel.
That is an interesting discussion, Torsten, and Alan intervenes with his view clearly expressed.
Now, coming to the blog, one of the examples says ‘Our house is between the wood, river and the village’. My question is this: Is the house between the wood and the river, or between the river and the village or between the wood and the village?
As regards the example ‘I am trying to decide between the athletic shoes, boots and high heels’, one can guess that the person is undecided on their choice between athletic shoes and boots, or boots and high heels, or athletic shoes and high heels.
(I used to be a stickler as Alan called me once after I joined this forum years ago. But with the incredible growth and development of the language, I’ve had to become flexible in order to keep myself abreast of the changing usages.)
That’s a good observation, Lawrence. The way I understand the sentence is this: The house is between the wood and river on one side and the village on the other. Not sure if that’s correct though.
@Torsten, I think you’re on the right track. ‘Our house is between the wood, the river and the village’.
I have created an interpretation to the sentence, hoping that it is clearer this way. This is how I would interpret it. Remember there are three things here, so the house is between all of them. (wood, river and village)
@Torsten, actually only a few minutes! Used MS Word, text boxes with text inside, filled text boxes with colour and grouped all of them together. As I couldn’t upload a saved file, I decided to use the snipping tool and then copy and paste into here!
I checked all the options on my phone earlier. The upload icon didn’t do anything so I just assumed I couldn’t. I see it now on the laptop and the option works.
The upload icon should be there no matter how you access the forum (there actually is only one way of accessing the forum that is via the website since there is no Discourse app).